Shock Silence
by CheckerBoard
Summary: Spike feels guilty, Willow is scarred, and Angel is caught between both. Relationships conflict when the three are forced to work out Willow's problems.. Set in the future. WiP! WS, w a little: WA, SA.us, DS, and BA.
1. Rememberings After A Decade

DISCLAIMER: No, I don't own any of the characters... yet.  
  
RATING: R, for descriptive scenes, as in blood and gore and sex and rape... also for language  
  
AUTHORS NOTES: First fanfic, go me! Set in the future. Everything since Season 3 is officially A/U, (which means no Spike chipping) no spoilers, my new universe will be revealed soon ;)  
  
WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH!!! Sheild your innocent eyes and press the back button if you don't want anyone from the Buffyverse to meet their match.  
  
PAIRINGS: W/S is the big one. A little bit of W/A, S/A.us, D/S, and B/A.  
  
Chapter One: Rememberings After A Decade (with commentary by Willow Rosenburg)  
  
It's been a long time since they died. I used to count by days, but the number has gotten so large it's hard to keep track. When I want to not think I separate the days into weeks and months. The months turn to years, decades, even. But in my pocket I always keep a scrap piece of paper with the number of days etched into it in pencil, so I can erase and start anew the next day.  
  
One day I couldn't find it in my pocket, and I screamed and cried. I let the fire from the fireplace burn my skin as punishment for losing it. When the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the night awoke, I found it, torn a bit, wedged in-between the pages of a book I would never have read. Then the number had been one hundred and twenty three days. It's been a long time since then, too.  
  
When I look at the paper sometimes the memories decide to stay hidden, and sometimes they return just as vividly as they had unfolded the night they happened. Sometimes there are wisps, sometimes huge chunks of long past time. Tonight there are wisps. Lately there have often been wisps.  
  
I remember her hair, it was blonde. She dyed it that way. It made a yellow-ish blur when she danced around her attacker, taunting it, before ending the fight. Next to her is always a red something. It's not the same color as her or anyone else's blood, but a cheerful red, kind of like cherries or some other red fruit. A happy red. I touch my hair and I think it might have been happy red too, a long time ago.  
  
Outside the street is deserted. There are deep holes in the stone every few feet, and the house across the street is old and I can almost feel water drip on me when I see the holes in the roof. There is movement inside, and I think it is a rat or maybe a raccoon, because there would never be a person this close to where I live.  
  
My house is big and lonely, and there are so many rooms I get lost often, but that's the way I like it. When I'm lost and I can't find my way out, I hope that means that no one can find their way in and get me. I curl up in the most unsuspecting spot and wait for my body to crumble from hunger or something remotely human, but it never does, and eventually I have to find a pencil to erase and refill the scrap of paper in my pocket. I uncurl myself and search for a way out, and I always do.  
  
I pull out the paper because I want to remember again. My brain feels like a huge steel dam with the smallest hole ever in it, so only the tiniest trickle of water can get through, but the hole is growing. This time, I can hear someone yelling at me, and I think what I hear is my name.  
  
"Willow!"  
  
---------------------  
  
"Willow!"  
  
"Oh my god, Xander, don't move. I think I hear something." There's the sound of wood creaking bouncing off of the library walls.  
  
Whispers, murmurs. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..."  
  
Footsteps. Pounding. Claws.  
  
"Ok, Willow and Xander, stay behind me. There can't be that many."  
  
"Buffy, there's-"  
  
"Shut up, Willow!" Worry, frustration? "Giles-"  
  
"Buffy, I can take care of myself." His old man facade is fading fast.  
  
"Ok, if they come in, I want you guys to stay out of the fray, and to get out first opening. Don't worry about me, I'm the Slayer..."  
  
And then they had come.  
  
They were ugly creatures. 7 feet tall, blue and scaly, with razor sharp claws that seemed to elongate every step they came closer. They're fangs were sharp and dripped with green saliva, maybe poison?  
  
The first came up behind Buffy and hit her hard in the head. She crumpled to the ground, whimpering in agony while she tried to regain her bearings. Another one came up behind Xander, wrapping its arms around his head and snapping his neck grotesquely. The sound cackled through the room, and Xander didn't have time to open his mouth and scream.  
  
Willow had watched her best friend die that night.  
  
Giles watched but stood unfazed as he tried to defend himself through his ugly tweed suit. The one who had killed - murdered - Xander moved over to the Watcher and jabbed at it with its claws. Giles, shouting a battle cry, had gone after it with a knife he had managed to gather before the creatures had surfaced, but the monsters body just absorbed the knife and stabbed Giles repeated times with its spears. Giles cried out in pain, his life's blood seeping through the beige business jacket and staining it red.  
  
Willow had watched her only father die that night.  
  
Buffy had gotten up, and after watching Giles take his last breath, began to attack the creatures with a vengeance. Every punch was filled with anger, but the creatures seemed nonchalant while they bested all of her moves. One grabbed a hold of her blonde hair and yanked at it, hard - it ripped fiercely out of her head, and blood seeped out of the holes and poured down her distorted face.  
  
Willow had watched the Slayer cry, the Slayer be tortured.  
  
When the three corpses lay rotting on the ground, the two demons' hunger for violence satisfied, they had left, and Willow stayed cowering in the corner. She was covered in tears and the blood of her friends that had splattered far enough to catch on her clothes. Her sobs had long died, her voice hoarse from screaming, her wrists bruised from a vampires grip.  
  
Spike had hoisted her into his arms and carried her off, leaving the three dead bodies to be picked at by the police.  
  
  
  
------------------------  
  
I will not break; I have found the covers and when I shut out all the light, my eyes don't burn as much. Still, questions haunt my mind.  
  
Why had he come for me? It is a question I often ask myself. He had left Buffy and the others to be maimed, tortured by huge scaly demons, but he had not let me die.  
  
Why?  
  
Later, he told me the demons had not been his fault, not his minions. The suffering and death Buffy and Giles and Xander had endured had not been in his master plan - not that he didn't enjoy watching it - and that I should not hate him for it. But I hated him anyway.  
  
I rekindle the fires of my memory again, so I can remember why it is that I hate him so.  
  
---------------------  
  
The room is decorated in reds and blacks, obviously the home of a vampire. She is thrown into the big, four-poster canopy bed, where dark colored veils cover all four openings.  
  
Willow is crying still, though she thought she had cried all of her tears out when Buffy had died. She thinks about the nasty crack of Xander's neck and sobs even louder, which is music to Spike's sadistic mind.  
  
"Like it better when you scream, love, but that'll have to come later." He says to her unhearing ears, while he comes closer to the bed. Her eyes are closed but she can sense him, like the prey senses its predator, and he laughs when she tenses. She would scootch back but the bed is so soft and seems to be holding her in place.  
  
He's at the edge of the bed now, his thighs on her kneecaps where her legs dangle over the side of the billowy covers. He crawls on top of her, and she has to lean back into the mattress because he is too strong.  
  
"I've always wanted to taste you." He coos, and digs his face in the crook of her neck and his fangs pierce her flesh, the hot bubbling life underneath her skin melting in his mouth.  
  
Willows screams are dead on the air for her throat is too rubbed raw to even whisper, but Spike can enjoy her painful silence while he slurps up her blood. He sighs when he has to pull away, and licks at the wound with his healing tongue while she attempts to whimper. Her heat radiates in waves off her body and he greedily absorbs it into his cold, dead one.  
  
"First, I'll fuck you until you break," he starts out, circling his tongue lazily around the fresh wound. "And then..." his voice is fading because the whine in Willows ears is growing, over compassing everything but itself. She finds reprieve in the monotonous ring.  
  
She is safe in her happy spot until she feels her skirt being ripped in half, and the inevitable is coming. She tries to dig her nails into his arms while he tears off her shirt and her white cotton bra underneath, but he laughs at her feeble attempts and moans in pleasure when she breaks the skin.  
  
And then he slams into her with a force, her virginity is broken and her eyes cloud over in pain. Her screams are again dead in her swollen throat, and she can find no solace this way while her insides are savagely twisted by Spike and... his.  
  
He comes violently, thrashing while she cries dry tears and her throat squeezes in a mixture of silent sobs and silent screams. Spike shudders and collapses his dead weight on top of her, her lungs squashed and her breathing choppy while he sighs contentedly.  
  
"We're going to have to do that again, love." He chuckles while he rolls over beside her, wrapping his arms possessively around her waist. He slowly seeps into a slumber, satisfied, and Willow tries to find her happy spot again.  
  
---------------------  
  
I shudder as I remember what he had done to me, and I touch my stomach where my insides are remembering the pain I had endured. The scratch marks have long since healed, the bruises gone, my body mended through time and a helping hand. But there are deeper scars, scars that won't heal no matter how many sweet whispers are whispered to me and comforting arms comfort me. Even his 'I'm so sorry's are empty and dead, like him.  
  
Why is he even here, I wonder? The memories are held back like water is held back in a dam, and I go at it with a pick and begin to chop at the dam with all my strength.  
  
----------------------  
  
Spike had wanted to take Willow and break her, make it so her insides craved him while her brain vomited at him.  
  
The morning after the first night, he had roused her gruffly and chained her to a wall. Her sore throat had not yet cooled, but she could make quiet sounds that Spike anticipated him savoring.  
  
He had taken out his torture instruments and his cock, and took turns hurting her both ways. Either style, her silent scream filled the room and ricocheted off of the walls, and Spike felt himself in vampire heaven. His control kept slipping, and he was only reminded of her frail body by Dru and her singsong voice.  
  
"She's only a little tree, Spike, don't chop her down." She'd coo, pampering Miss Edith while she relished in the cries of Spike's captive.  
  
When Willow had found her happy spot again and the whine of her ears had droned out everything, Spike finally stopped. "No fun if she isn't around to scream for me," he had said, and Dru just clapped her hands in response and dropped Miss Edith to the ground. Spike pulled Willow from her restraints and let her tortured body fall onto his own, and he carried her to the large vampire bed to let her rest.  
  
Willow had counted the days then, too, only she could remember them in her tormented mind and repeated them over and over when Spike was relentless with his inflicted agony. She counted twelve days before her cavalry had come.  
  
She had laid broken on the bed, her wounds covered in bandages for her captors feared she would infect and die before they had ample time to play with her. Angel had crawled through the window, and his warm yet cold touch had roused her.  
  
Angel looked at her naked, bruised and battered form and was overridden with guilt. "I'm so sorry, Willow," he said, crying over the sight of the cuts that marred her underneath the gauze and tape. Willow's voice was hoarse, but she could make out a faint phrase that Angel could hear through his vampiric hearing.  
  
"Where is Spike?" Angel had cried even louder at her question, while he wondered how he was going to move her without reopening any of the healing wounds.  
  
"The bastard will die," he had declared, and picked her up gingerly, though the movement caused her to wince in anguish. "Oz and Cordelia had gone to the library and found... them." He began to tell Willow what had happened while she had been captured, trying to take her thoughts off of the immeasurable pain she was experiencing. "They came to get me and told me your body couldn't be found. I went to the library. There were so many police there. They asked me questions I couldn't answer. But I could smell Spike far off in a corner, his smell faint like he hadn't been there in days, but I knew it was his fault."  
  
Angel crawled out of the window, holding Willow close to his chest. "We came looking for you. It took forever - it took too long." They traversed through the bushes, and Willow could see a car not far off from them in the driveway. It wasn't Spike's DeSoto, so she guessed it was Angel's.  
  
He laid her in the back seat. Her eyes were open and terror was filling them, and Angel tore his gaze away from the haunting sight.  
  
"The bastard will die, Willow, I promise." Angel swore, while he climbed into the front of the Plymouth and drove away into the night.  
  
--------------------------  
  
Angel and I had never been friends before, but then he had saved me and took care of me. He didn't want me to hurt, so he drove me far away, to who knows where, and kept me safe.  
  
I'm here now, in this God forsaken place, where there are no gates to the outer walls so I cannot leave. Angel holds me captive like Spike had, though he feels that it is for the greater good and I'm safer if nothing can get in or out. Every night I sleep in his big bed where he holds onto me like Spike had, afraid to let me go as if I could run away. At times we go out into the inner courtyard, and I pick berries in the sun while Angel watches me from under the shaded porch so that my therapy may continue.  
  
Even if I am still captured, I know it eases his mind to be taking care of me, because Buffy is dead and he wants me to help his pain like he is helping mine. So each night I let him hold me while he tells me some Irish fairytale he remembers from his human years, and we ease our pain together in fear of the alternative. When I cry he kisses my tears away and rubs my back, and when he cries I cradle his face and press my lips to his. I am certain that is a circle of destruction, but for now we find solace together and that is more than welcome.  
  
His 'I'm so sorry's are still empty and cold, like he is, because no matter how much he apologizes, it is Spike from whom I need my comfort. Angel's sweet nothings he whispers into my ears are warm and friendly for a while, but without the apology from my first captor the scars still dig deep into my bones.  
  
So while Angel slept a magically-induced sleep that I remembered the spell for from a long time ago, I whispered to my Goddesses a call for Spike in hopes that he could find me even though I do not know where I am. Then I curl up into Angel's waiting arms and pretend that I am Buffy, so that at least he can sleep without fear. 


	2. Return of an Old Captor

DISCLAIMER: No, I don't own any of the characters... yet.  
  
RATING: R, for descriptive scenes, as in blood and gore and sex and rape... also for language  
  
AUTHORS NOTES: First fanfic, go me! Set in the future. Everything since Season 3 is officially A/U, (which means no Spike chipping) no spoilers, my new universe will be revealed soon ;)  
  
WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH!!! Sheild your innocent eyes and press the back button if you don't want anyone from the Buffyverse to meet their match.  
  
PAIRINGS: W/S is the big one. A little bit of W/A, S/A.us, S/D, and B/A.  
  
Chapter Two: Return of an Old Captor (Interlude)  
  
I don't think she understands the consequences. Does she understand the consequences? Bloody bint, she doesn't understand the consequences. Magic is harmful. Magic is dangerous. Magic is pulling me towards her.  
  
I should have known that stupid redheaded witch would figure out a way to make me pay. She'd wheedle through her damned spell books until she found out a way to get me to go back to her, and then she could make me hurt like I hurt her.  
  
Oh, God, why did I hurt her?  
  
She was alone, and probably frightened, I would be too if I were her and my best friends got tortured and killed in front of my eyes. Every human would probably react that way, and she is definitely no exception. I thought it had been my opening. Hadn't it been my opening?  
  
Maybe I should stop thinking about this. Radio, yes, radio.  
  
Damn radio.  
  
Why am I even driving towards her? How do I know I'm driving towards her? Easy, of course, I had bitten her so hard that first night, made her mine, claimed her so no one else would touch her. She's mine, my possession; I know what happens to my things.  
  
So why did I let her go, let Angel capture her? Drunk off my ass, that's what I was, sodding Mexican brandy. Smelled Angel, of course, he's one smelly, crappy Grandsire that I don't have the brains to stake. Smelled her, too, her precious blood that tasted so good. Nice little strawberry/peach scent they've got going on when they're together.  
  
Fuck, that's when it all got bad.  
  
I was so drunk that I couldn't think straight, and I went after Dru. She sodding touched MY possessions and that wasn't right, Red was mine.  
  
--------------------  
  
"Dru, why the fuck were you touching her?"  
  
"Mmm, Spike, what's yours is mine, of course." Dru fondles Miss Edith's hair; the china doll uncomplaintive of the vampire's savage tugs.  
  
"No Dru, Red is mine and only mine!" Spike's love is forgotten, and he grasps at Miss Edith and holds her high. He throws the doll down to the cobblestone floor with such a force that the china breaks and lodges into the flesh of what is nearest.  
  
"I'm your sire, Spike! What's yours is mine!" She yells, pulling shards of Miss Edith from her leg with a gasp of pain. Blood speckles her dark gown and her eyes flash yellow.  
  
"Red. Is. Mine." Spike is seeing red, and he grabs Dru's neck and squeezes it, hard. She makes small choking sounds and her eyes flutter softly. Spike loosens his hold and Dru falls to the ground, groping for consciousness while her thoughts slip.  
  
"Daddy!" Dru tries to whisper, but her voice is caught in her squished throat. Her eyes remain yellow and her fangs grow longer when Spike kicks at the wooden table, breaking one of the legs.  
  
"Got it, Dru? Red is mine." He repeats, and he grabs her form and hoists her up onto the three-legged table so she is lying flat on its surface. He brings the broken leg up to her chest and jabs it menacingly near her unbeating heart. "Got it?!"  
  
Dru is unhearing and she falls into unconsciousness, and Spike is left holding her body up with his knee between her legs and the splintery wood pressing dangerously into her skin.  
  
The red haze that had shielded his eyes lifts, and he is angry at his actions, so he lays his mate down gently and looks for a spot of torture. But when he opens his bedroom door Willow is gone and the scent of peach replaces her.  
  
---------------  
  
Red must be west from here, because every time I try to turn east my insides rip up fiercely and I can't do anything but change direction. Another one of my little witches many tricks up her sleeve, I guess.  
  
That peach smell was Angelus, and as much as I want to hurt him, I'm not one to go around staking my Grandsires. I couldn't find him anyway, he ran off with Willow, and probably Spike-proofed the whole place so I couldn't find her again.  
  
Well, Willow took care of that, didn't she?  
  
Why am I calling her Willow? I never did before. Always Red, that was her nickname. Or Witch.  
  
Or Whore.  
  
I'm such a bastard. I tried to make her feel like it was her fault I was raping her. That I was torturing her day in, day out. Fed off of her when I got hungry, ripped at her flesh when I was angry, fucked her when I wanted a quick shag.  
  
I have to tell her I'm sorry, because I really am. Everything finally caught up with me.  
  
I'm a vampire with a soul. 


	3. Forced Family Ties

DISCLAIMER: No, I don't own any of the characters... yet.  
  
RATING: R, for descriptive scenes, as in blood and gore and sex and rape... also for language  
  
AUTHORS NOTES: First fanfic, go me! Set in the future. Everything since Season 3 is officially A/U, (which means no Spike chipping) no spoilers, my new universe will be revealed soon ;)  
  
WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH!!! Sheild your innocent eyes and press the back button if you don't want anyone from the Buffyverse to meet their match.  
  
PAIRINGS: W/S is the big one. A little bit of W/A, S/A.us, D/S, and B/A.  
  
Chapter Three: Forced Family Ties  
  
"What are you doing here? Dru kick you out?" Angel snickers, his tough skin surfacing at the sight of his Grandchilde.  
  
"No." Spike says, his eyes boring holes into Angel's new hide, softening and melting the facade until it empties into a puddle of water at Angel's feet. His eyes remain rock-hard, though.  
  
"Get out, no one wants you here." Angel commands. The smell of cigarettes surrounds him and overflow his senses, his emotions threatening to spill against the many barriers he's erected around himself. Spike's eyes flash with a hardly discernable emotion, but he soon looks like he doesn't care.  
  
"Willow certainly does." Spike's words hit one of Angel's heartstrings and he berates himself for whatever it is he did that made it so obvious Willow was around him. Could Spike smell her on him, maybe? Spike senses the inner struggle and quiets him with his voice.  
  
"I got called here, poof. Willow never tell you?" Spike smirks at Angel's obvious discomfort. The older vampire's inner turmoil turns up a notch while he remembers Willow and their latest conversation.  
  
-----------------------  
  
"What happens if Spike comes here?" Willow asks, and she has masked her voice to make it sound trembling and weak. Angel does not catch her lie and swallows her 'fear' into his arms.  
  
While he holds her, she leans against him and he says: "He's never going to come here. He'll never find out where we are, Willow." He sounds sure of himself and Willow almost feels regret for making it otherwise.  
  
"But if he did. If he found me - us." Angel squeezes her tighter and kisses the top of her head, brushing faded red strands from her face. He pulls her back from his chest and looks deep into her emerald eyes, watching them as they flick to each of his chocolate ones.  
  
"I'd get rid of him Willow. For you, for us, for what he did to you." Angel tells her, and his voice is so full of emotion she almost backs away from his touch. She has to look away from him so she hides her face into his broad chest, because his eyes are brimming with love and she hates to watch him lie. She snuggles into him and hopes that he will grasp her close so her vision will be blocked by the black threads of his shirt, but he lifts her chin and makes her look at his melting eyes again. "Willow?" He pleads, wondering what it is that is triggering her questions.  
  
She lifts her lips to his neck and her eyes flutter closed, trying to ignore his questions and make him forget too. It works, and soon he is moaning deep in his throat as she sucks and nibbles lightly at his skin where warm blood used to flow. He grabs her face and greedily kisses her, and she presses herself to his body because she knows he will be overwhelmed with her heat. When they fall back into the mattress behind them, Willow knows he has forgotten what she has asked and she can pretend to be Buffy again.  
  
-----------------------  
  
The epiphany is not lost to Spike's perceptive eyes. He almost lets himself chuckle in that sinister way he once did, but the seriousness of what is transpiring holds him back.  
  
"Yeah, get it now?" Spike asks, his tone not mocking, almost devoid of emotion. He steps forward towards Angel, then sidesteps and walks past him, through the open gate where the huge house looms. He stops again, waiting, his back turned to a turning Angel.  
  
Angel is in front of Spike in a flash, hitting him, scratching him, his face devoid of human disguise. Spike staggers backwards, reeling, then counter-attacks, and it is a flurry of fists and teeth. The battle ranges on, and no side gains the advantage until both vampires are huddling in separate corners, wounded and tired. Spike turns to walk away, but his insides rip up again and he knows Willow is reminding him.  
  
While Angel reels, unmoving on the ground, Spike crawls through the gate and reaches for the doorsteps, but his borrowed blood slips out a bit too fast and he sighs into unconsciousness.  
  
A few minutes later, Angel peeks at his wounds and prods at them, sending sharp pain up to knock at his brain. He hears the scratches of paws on concrete, and his night vision tells of a rat digging at the hard surface. Angel, with a burst of inhuman speed, grabs the rat and bites deeply into it before it can squeal - it tastes of dirty city water and fur, but he gulps it down and feels the warm blood go straight to his bleeding wounds. He'd cough and puke at the sight of himself draining a rat if he had been less desperate. When the animal is limp and cold in Angel's frozen hands, he lets it drop to the floor and picks himself up to a wobbly standing position.  
  
When Angel finally reaches the doorstep, he sees Spike unconscious on the ground. Angel stares at the body for a moment, wondering.  
  
Then he kicks the blonde form off the steps and into the nearest bushes, struggles into the house, and falls asleep on the carpeted floor.  
  
-----------------------  
  
When Willow awoke to find Angel lying helpless and bleeding on the floor, she ran to his side and immediately performed a healing spell. Angel's wounds started to closed up and she watched the dead skin wake up from it's slumber for just a moment as it regenerated itself. Tears attempted to spill out from behind her eyes until Angel's own eyes fluttered open and settled on Willow's pretty, saddened face.  
  
"Willow..." he breathes, and shakes his head until his thoughts cleared and last night hits him full forced. Willow sees his flinch when the memories tsunami over his consciousness and wonders, what could it be...?  
  
"Willow..." he says again, and his head is a mixed jumble of thoughts.  
  
"Angel, what happened?" Willow inquires, and she feels her insides squish up as she thinks of what could have done such damage to her protector. Then she remembers that he is just another captor and reprimands herself mentally for even caring.  
  
"Oh, Willow, you won't believe..." he starts, and then remembers Spikes words:  
  
"I got called here, poof. Willow never tell you?"   
  
And if it hadn't been him, it must have been Willow. His eyes flash in anger and wave after wave of rage builds against the calm demeanor he forces himself to portray.  
  
Willow senses the inner turmoil. "Angel?" she inquires again, hoping, praying it just might be a wild blonde vampire haunting the insides of Angel's eyelids. She lets herself touch his cheek and feels a chunk of Angel's mental barriers blast out, until:  
  
"Nothing." Angel brushes her off and stands, his wounds magically closed. He stands up and walks to the kitchen, and Willow hears the sounds of a microwave spinning a cup of blood around in circles.  
  
------------------------------  
  
Spike groggily woke up. His skin was burning, heated and rushing with boiling blood, and he wondered why he smelled like charred skin.  
  
Then he opened his eyes and was met with the sight of his arm burning off.  
  
"Holy shit!!!" He yelled and waved his arm around frantically, eyes darting for shade while other parts of his body started to burst into flames. He spotted a piece of dark near the corner of the house... if he could just reach it...  
  
  
  
Spike made a wild dash towards it and fell into the incredibly small spot of shadow right when his precious hair started to catch on fire. He busied himself with hitting his limbs frantically against the side of the house, suffocating the flames until it was just himself and his square shaped shade.  
  
Then, the realness of the situation dawned on him.  
  
Okay, mate, you're in front of Angel's house, with a Willow inside of it. It's broad daylight, and you're standing in the only piece of shade, which, by the way, is only big enough for you to move one inch to the left and once inch to the right if you felt the need to stretch. Oh, yeah, you're covered in your own blood and quite a few bites and bruises, with the possibility of collapsing again into the aforementioned broad daylight should you not get you're hands on some blood. If Angel sees you soaking up his only bit of shade, he will run in circles around yourself laughing at you, then beat you up again/more, and stake you with Willow's favorite pencil.  
  
Spike couldn't find an easy way out of this. He couldn't even find a hard way. He was stuck.  
  
Then, the front door opened with a clang, and Spike woke up from his inner workings and looked over his shoulder to see Angel coming his way, under a pink frilly umbrella.  
  
"Nice umbrella, there." Spike chuckled, forgetting his vulnerable position. He stopped laughing when a cold plastic bag collided with his chest and he grabbed it, recognizing the feel and smell of blood. He took a quick look at it, contemplating.  
  
"It's not drugged, if that's what you're thinking." Angel replied monotonously. Spike, too hungry to care, savagely ripped into the package and sucked the blood out from the bite holes until he was left with an empty bag.  
  
"Thanks," Spike said, and Angel raised an eyebrow at his manners.  
  
"Yeah." Angel replied, and there was a deafening moment of awkward silence as the two stared at each other, one still bleeding on the brick wall of the house.  
  
"Willow's inside, I suppose." Spike broke the silence. Angel nodded his head once, then turned on his heel and stalked towards the door. Spike watched him go with a sinking feeling in his stomach.  
  
"You can't leave me out here to die! That'd be very un-soulful of you!" Spike called after him, and Angel turned towards the platinum blonde, his hand still on the door handle.  
  
"It would be." Angel said quietly, and walked briskly past the threshold and closed the door behind him. Spike strained to hear the click of a lock, but heard none.  
  
One second... two seconds... three seconds...  
  
Spike made a wild dash for the door, his skin heating up. He saw tiny sparks skip between his fingers after climbing the first step; he smelled his clothes catching fire when he turned the door handle; he felt the familiar feel of burning skin when he finally wrenched the door open, crossing into the darkness and beating himself against the floor to destroy the flames.  
  
Finally, the personal fire was out and Spike was left in a bloody, battered, burned heap on the sickeningly pastel carpet. He heard a snicker and turned up to see Angel's half-smiling face.  
  
"I left the door unlocked."  
  
"I noticed."  
  
Then Angel walked out of the room, leaving his grandchilde swooning on the floor. 


End file.
